


Dusted

by Hyliare



Category: One Piece
Genre: Bickering, Canon-Typical Violence, Food, Freckles, Gen, M/M, POV Roronoa Zoro, POV Third Person, Petition to Remove 'Vinsmoke' from Sanji's Tag, Post-Time Skip, Pre-Slash, Self-Esteem Issues, Staring, Swearing, ZoSan Month 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 03:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7152008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyliare/pseuds/Hyliare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sun was beating down on deck, curling the leaves on the mikan trees and whipping the air out of their lungs like it had been doing for the last week and a half.</p>
<p>The cook had turned into a lobster, but he had been really offended when Zoro pointed out the resemblance, which was weird. The cook loved seafood.</p>
<p>After three days, the red shell had faded, but it left something behind. Some things. Spots. Freckles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dusted

**Author's Note:**

> This, my inaugural fic for the ZoSan fandom, was written for DarkChibiShadow's Birthday Month of ZoSan (http://onigirifortwo.tumblr.com/post/145314409610/as-some-of-you-may-know-i-go-hard-as-fuck-for-my). Happy birthday, DCS!
> 
> Also, shout-out to nyxalecto.tumblr.com for drawing Sanji with freckles in an unrelated picture that I saw when this fic was at around 1,000 words. Immediate follow! (The rest of their blog is great, too.)

The sun was beating down on deck, curling the leaves on the mikan trees and whipping the air out of their lungs like it had been doing for the last week and a half. Shade didn’t help much, but Franky had set up extra umbrellas anyway, and Chopper had overseen the creation of some “hydration stations,” filled with slow-melting ice and slightly-salty water, under them. Usopp was at one. He’d laid himself out on the warm wood, supine, with a long, flexible straw in his mouth, eyes protected by both lids and goggles. His bare chest was baked darker and so were his shoulders—even the top of his nose. His skin had stopped peeling a day or two prior, but it still had a reddish-pink undertone. He wasn’t the only one who’d tanned up, and/or burned: the scar on Luffy’s own chest stood out starker, Robin had gone sort of gold (it made her look more human), and on the other end of things, Brook’s bones looked even whiter than usual. Nami had spent two days pink before Robin shared whatever lotion she’d been using. The cook had turned into a lobster, but he had been _really_ offended when Zoro pointed out the resemblance, which was weird. The cook loved seafood.

After three days, the red shell had faded, but it left something behind. Some things. Spots. Freckles.

So, that was that. The cook was poking his head out from the galley, squinting through the sunlight, with a smattering of light brown freckles that spread from cheek to cheek over his bent nose. There were a few as far up as the tail of that damned swirly eyebrow, too. It made Zoro wonder what was on the other side, beneath the sun-bleached hair that was curling at the ends just like leaves of Nami’s trees. The hair hid most of the ones on the cook’s forehead, and it had been getting long enough lately to obscure his neck, too, but today it was tied back in a stupid, squatty ponytail, so Zoro’s eye could follow a sparse trail down an otherwise-pale chin to the edge of a sleeveless cotton undershirt. His eye skipped to a dotted shoulder, down the bicep, then to the large hand on the galley door. There were even small spots there, scattered around pronounced knuckles.

He noticed Usopp sit up slowly, swinging his arms into his lap. He stood, started walking like a zombie toward…Had that been a meal call? Was it lunch time? Zoro hadn’t heard a damned thing. He pushed himself off the deck all the same.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

It looked like him.

“Looks like you.”

“…Oi?”

Zoro looked up from the drink in front of him. It wasn’t in a fancy glass with a striped paper straw like the women’s were, but it was built the same. The cook called it “frozen ‘hot’ chocolate,” not too sweet, with some kind of foam on top, dusted with cocoa or cinnamon or a mixture of both, at which Zoro pointed, for clarification. One visible blue eye widened, narrowed, darkened. The table was quiet.

Luffy’s head floated lazily over so he could follow Zoro’s finger to the top of the drink—his own was already gone. He looked down at it, he looked up at Sanji. “…It does!”

Then all Hell broke loose.

Later, as Zoro (in-) conspicuously rested his aching head against one of the hydration stations’ water tanks, he wondered if there was a single thing he could say about the cook’s appearance that wouldn’t result in a heel-shaped bruise.

It hadn’t even been a fucking insult.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Two days later, it was still boiling. Not literally, not like _that_ time, but…Whatever. It was too hot to be literal. Or figural. Figurative. Zoro sucked in a mouthful of water. Most of him was in the shade, but the sun had dipped enough to sneak past the edge of the darkness and roast his bare feet. He sucked again, and got bubbles.

“You _trying_ to get tan lines?”

Zoro’s eye started at the deck, at the edge of his own robe, where he’d already been staring. It moved across a plank or two, reached a pair of sandals, climbed up a pair of furry legs (not many freckles at all), stopped briefly at the frayed hem of some jean shorts, kept going—“Hey! Up here.”

He snapped his gaze up to the cook’s nose, scanned the line of dots, then looked at him properly. He was holding a giant, icy pitcher in one hand, and in the other, a tray that was loaded up with three more. A lit cigarette was hanging out of his mouth. He popped the tank of the station open with a tap of his knee, and started refilling it. Zoro blinked.

“I said, are you trying to tan your fucking feet? With those scars, you’re gonna look like you got a transplant.”

“No.” He closed his eye.

“Well, it’s gonna look stupid.”

He shrugged, and drank from the fresh water.

“Move your feet!” Accompanied by a sandaled shove that Zoro would almost call gentle. Almost. He let the straw fall out of his mouth, ignoring it where it caught on his chin, as he opened his eye again. “Why?”

“…I _just_ told you, moss for brains. Did all your brain-moss shrivel up in the heat?”

“Don’t care about tan lines.”

“ _Tch_. Fine. Look stupid, then.”

The cook turned, grumbling something that sounded like, “Fucking sun,” or maybe, “sucking fun.” Probably the first one. He was stomping away to refill a different station tank.

“Oi.” The stomps stopped.

“ _What?_ ”

“You don’t look stupid.” Stomps, getting louder, stopping again. A voice replaced them, flat-toned and deep.

“Say that again?”

Zoro’s mouth drew tight. He breathed out through his nose and kept his face calm and empty. “You don’t look stupid.”

“We weren’t talking about me.” The voice was still flat, but it had a hard side to it that made the back of Zoro’s neck itch, along with the section of his forehead where a bruise had only recently faded.

“I know. But…you don’t look stupid. Not the spots, anyway.”

“What.”

“…I like ‘em.”

“ _What_.”

Talk about the heat shriveling brains. Zoro snorted quietly and groped around with his lips and tongue for the fallen straw. When he found it, he took another long drink and waited for a kick that never came. He cracked his eye open again.

The love cook was light on his feet, when he wanted to be.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Dark clouds were rolling in, putting pressure on sinuses and setting teeth on edge. The condensation collected a little faster on the water tanks, the sails bloomed a little thicker. The cook served food that was room temperature, instead of cold.

The sky cracked open and drenched everything. The umbrellas turned into a different kind of shelter, and someone spiked the “hydration stations” with something less hydrating.

At some point, the freckles on the cook’s body disappeared beneath his shirt, tie, and jacket, but he couldn’t hide the ones on his face. He served something warm. Zoro ate it, and tried to keep count of the small spots. Were there fewer that day, than there were the day before? Did he care?

…Did _he_ care?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

“Why do you care?”

The cook’s jacket had been laid over the back of a chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows to do dishes. Zoro counted forearm freckles—one, two, three, many. Not as many as before. Blond head turned, swirly brow raised, mouth frowned. “Why…?”

“Why do you care, how you look?”

“…What kind of question is that? Most people care how they look. Marimo aren’t people—that must be why _you_ don’t.”

“You care a lot.”

Zoro watched the cook’s jaw tighten as he looked back to the sink. The cigarette clenched in his teeth dropped some ash into the dishwater.

“I care a normal amount. Get out of here!”

“You look good. Why do you think you don’t?”

“Like I care about your opinion.”

The rest of the ash disintegrated, and Zoro tracked it down to where it floated on the top of the suds for a second or two, before disappearing. He looked back up at the cook’s profile. A forehead, not too long, and more curved than his flat “five”-head (not a funny name for it, by the way, Usopp, Nami); a nose that had definitely been broken, more than once, but which probably hadn’t been straight to begin with; thin lips that looked thinner when they were holding a cigarette, always so tightly; and a pointy chin, softened only a little by its facial hair, nothing like his bare, boxy jaw. It was a good face, and parts of it were dusted with freckles. Dusted like the top of some fancy drink with cocoa, or pancake with sugar, or even rice with furikake. “They look good. They suit you.”

“…You’re so embarrassing.”

Zoro stayed where he was. Sanji went back to washing dishes.

“They’re all gonna disappear, huh?”

“Guess so. ‘S never happened before.”

“Oh.”

Zoro got closer. Sanji took his arms out of the water. Wet fingers grabbed his cigarette and gave it a useless flick, setting it on the metal rim of the sink to smolder. He turned, bodily, all the way through his hips. “What now?”

“You work out in the morning, right? Before the sun’s up?”

“…” The cook turned again, pointedly, back to the sink and picked his cigarette up again. A quick inhalation revived it, and the exhalation seeped out slow, precisely in Zoro’s direction, who waved the smoke away with a wince. “Before breakfast,” the cook said.

“Work out later.”

“No.”

“Work out _more_ , later.”

“No.”

“Work out more, later, with me. Teach me that stupid dog stretch.”

Another cloud of foul smoke. “…I’ll think about it.”

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

So, Sanji learned that a second round of light exercise after lunch, under the afternoon sun, helped him re-energize before dinner, and Zoro learned that there was nothing “light” about yoga.

He also learned that there were 148 freckles on the left-and-middle part of the cook’s face, and another 60 on the covered right. There were 83 on his left shoulder, and 93 on his right. There were 31 on each hand, but the ones on the right were darker. There were only 16 on his feet, together. The count had to be kept updated (constantly), but Zoro didn’t mind. It added some flavor to his reps.

He hadn’t been told off for staring in weeks, and when he reported a significant change, the cook would take in the comment with a nod, instead of a kick—that was called progress.

He’d count up the spots that dusted the cook’s chest and stomach next.

Zoro would count every spot on Sanji’s body, eventually.


End file.
